Nareg Dekermenjian had Mom’s Day brunch with the Stanley Cup, which brought about greater than a bit of anxiousness since nobody was certain what hockey’s championship trophy favored to eat.
“I’m considering all-meat food plan for the Stanley Cup,” Dekermenjian mentioned earlier than sliding into a big nook sales space at Stanley’s Restaurant (no relation to the Cup) in Sherman Oaks. “Something lower than that, I’m going to be very, very disillusioned.”
Because it turned out, the Cup was fasting so the plate in entrance of it remained empty. However then the trophy wasn’t the one being feted Sunday, Dekermenjian was. Final week he was named the winner of the NHL’s Future Targets Most Worthwhile Trainer Program, chosen from a area of lots of of candidates from 31 of the league’s 32 cities.
For the fifth-grade trainer, who left a well-paying job as a monetary advisor for a classroom 4 years in the past, being honored by a go to from the Stanley Cup was a full-circle second in a number of methods. For starters, it was an acknowledgment of the position hockey performed in serving to him adapt to his new nation after his father, Edward, a jeweler in Lebanon who spoke solely damaged English, wagered all the pieces when he left Beirut for the West Valley so his three kids might have an opportunity at a greater life.
Nareg Dekermenjian and his household eat lunch whereas the Stanley Cup sits in the midst of the desk. Left to proper are Edward, Ian, Zovig, Oliver and Nareg.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Occasions)
Dekermenjian, the youngest, was simply 5 and he instantly had bother becoming in.
“Making pals or having some type of hyperlink with the youngsters my age, coming from a distinct nation, that was actually completely different,” he mentioned. So in the future his mom, Zovig, pushed him out the door to affix some neighborhood youngsters in a street-hockey recreation.
“I’m glad I did,” Zovig mentioned Sunday. The sport, it turned out, would change all the pieces.
“They gave me a roller-hockey stick and I simply type of fell in love with the game instantly,” Dekermenjian mentioned. “I’d by no means been actually good at something earlier than, particularly athletics. However I took to curler hockey.
“What it helped me do is create plenty of self-confidence and shallowness, which is flip helped me in social conditions.”
Dekermenjian went on to play at a number of ranges, grew to become a Kings season-ticket holder and now coaches his two sons on the concrete rink he constructed of their yard. He’s additionally utilizing hockey to interrupt down social and cultural boundaries on the Dixie Canyon Group Constitution College in Sherman Oaks, the place most of the practically 700 college students come from immigrant households new to the U.S.
Nareg Dekermenjian, a trainer in Sherman Oaks who received an NHL award, watches as Stanley Cup keeper Howie Borrow units up the trophy.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Occasions)
“We now have an enormous melting pot right here,” assistant principal Maria Silva mentioned.
But when all these kids communicate completely different languages, put on completely different garments and pack completely different meals for lunch, all of them perceive sports activities. Even hockey.
“100%,” mentioned Dekermenjian, 41. “That’s type of why I do it.”
There are parallels between the challenges athletes face and those college students face. The grit and perseverance wanted to make it via an NHL season is simply as essential to make it via a tutorial yr. There are targets and victories and defeats and teamwork, each on the ice and within the classroom.
“That connects plenty of the dots for these youngsters that aren’t used to listening to it that means,” Dekermenjian mentioned. “I truly present clips and movies of hockey video games when groups are down by a number of targets they usually don’t surrender after which they arrive again, they pull the goalie, they usually take it.
“That’s, I believe, a greater means of beginning a session. Having these youngsters have a look at one thing so unimaginable after which themselves and considering, ‘You recognize what? I can do that.’”
Nareg Dekermenjian takes a selfie along with his son, Oliver, and the Stanley Cup throughout lunch at Stanley’s Restaurant.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Occasions)
Silva mentioned few academics at Dixie Canyon are requested by dad and mom extra regularly than Dekermenjian, whom she calls Mr. Deker. She usually cease by his class herself simply to pay attention.
“I’m simply captivated by the tales that he’s sharing. And I don’t need to depart,” she mentioned. “I need to be a child and take heed to him too. Once they introduced that he received [the NHL award,] I positively felt they acquired it proper.”
The tales don’t at all times work, nonetheless. And after they don’t Dekermenjian, like coach, modifications his recreation plan — as he did in his first yr as a trainer after welcoming a shy Ukrainian woman named Maria, who understood little English.
“We’re going over U.S. historical past and I’m like, ‘What does this baby have to know in regards to the Structure?’ There’s far more vital classes we have to train,” he mentioned.
Maria beloved artwork so Dekermenjian requested her to attract every day after which, after class, he and a translator would talk about the that means behind what she had drawn. She was quickly thriving in her new surroundings.
When youngsters wrestle, Dekermenjian mentioned, the issue usually isn’t the scholar, however quite an engagement challenge with the trainer.
“Educators, we have to type of step it up and have interaction them in nontraditional methods,” he mentioned.
“I’ve seen it work within the classroom. So I do it an increasing number of and the suggestions has been overwhelming. I’m making a bunch of hockey followers and Kings followers within the course of, so everybody wins, I assume.”
Talking of the Kings, that’s the second purpose Sunday’s meal was a reunion with the Stanley Cup. The primary time he met the trophy was in 2014, when he posed in entrance of it along with his spouse, Lori, and then-infant son Ian, who truly owes his existence to the Cup.
Throughout the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs, Lori got here as much as Dekermenjian and steered that if the Kings received the Cup, they need to have a child. Dekermenjian, unsure whether or not he was able to be a dad however sure the Kings had no likelihood to win the NHL title, agreed — and a bit of greater than a yr later, Ian was born. They’ve since added a second son, Oliver.
“It’s a full-circle factor,” he mentioned.
“I positively really feel like I discovered the place I should be in life. And I’m 100% sure that I used to be meant to show.”
On Sunday the NHL agreed, giving him a day with the Stanley Cup to show it.
